catch up otra vez

OCTOBER 1.
Wow its October already. Today was an early morning for casa del nino. I carried my TON of food to FLACSO and we headed out to florencia varela. The kids loved the houses. I will post some pictures of the creations. We read the story of Hansel and Gretel (I need to work on my reading out loud in spanish). Then they did a bit of explication of the moral of the story and such. After that we drew backdrops for each house and then we dished out the dulce de leche and gummies and crackers. They went to work. After about an hour and a half everyone was sticky and happy. Went to Spanish class which was better today, although still feeling a bit lost. After class drank a coffee with an older german woman and a younger woman from Slovenia who are also in my class. it was really neat. And it was in Spanish wahoo! Stayed around and talked politics in English with a couple other flacso friends then took the bus home. I have had a realization that I not only need to practice speaking and writing, I need to start thinking in Spanish. I will try to start thinking in Spanish from now on, except when I write these entries. Unless you all could do some speedy translation. Che--Quizás puedo escribir algunos partes de estos en castellano (nadie dice español acá, todos hablan castellano). Chau.
Sept 30
Falling behind a bit on my blog writing mostly since I came back to reality and realized there is oh so much to do! Also because now I am pretty much settled in and am having a hard time writing: I ate breakfast today. Since my routine entails breakfast every day (imagine that! ha). And now it is 1 am and I have to be up at 7 tomorrow so I will retire and save the last two entries for tomorrow. Buenos noches.
Tuesday consisted of getting up and going to the store to buy supplies for my cooking class on Wednesday. The casa del nino is having a reading marathon on Friday so we were encouraged strongly to cater our classes this week to the theme of reading. We picked to do the Hansel and Gretel story and make little houses like with gram crackers and icing. We figured everyone (all 40) of the kids could participate and it would be related to reading. I went to the store not really knowing what I would find, since generally plans change due to the price and availability of supplies. First problem, no gram crackers. Understandable. I settled on crackers that gave me 10 packs for 10 pesos. I was doing well. Next I got a huge bag of gummies which set me back 13 pesos (we have a limit of 30 pesos from FLACSO). And the last part was a challenge, the icing. I wandered around a bit aimlessly before I settled on a huge thing of dulce de leche for the glue. They don’t have icing here…only chocolate you melt and drip on your cake. Overall I got all of it for 35.00 and I think he charged me for 2 dulce de leches (after I got home and looked at my receipt). I headed down to Spanish class early to get lunch. We ended up going to the California burrito (yes family I know I ate a burrito) company (so American. Like chipotle but lots more expensive). Went to Spanish and got really frusterated at not understanding the things we were learning. Then went to my servicio class and talked to my teacher about doing a pilgrimage on Saturday.
Sept 29
Today was very tranquilo as the argentines would call it. I got up at a leisurely time (11.30) went for a run for the first time in ages (I felt like a --- insert any sluggish animal here). I also did some errands, buying a new memory card and going shopping. I tried to do some studying which got interrupted by an intense game of tetris. Ate dinner (cooked veggies potatoes, squash, carrots, corn) they mix it all up and add a ton of salt. Pretty plain. The food is getting a bit less tasty as the days go on, and this meal didn’t tickle my taste buds.